ABSTRACT

This chapter describes a consultant-client partnership approach to the diagnosis and treatment of workplace stress. Two examples, a special courts judge and a family courts judicial community, provide detailed descriptions of applications of the Job Stress Survey (JSS) as a benchmarking tool for calibrating optimal productivity and pinpointing the effects of over-and under stimulation associated with specific workplace stressors. The case of the individual judge provides perspective for interpreting the more complex judicial community data and illustrates the wide-ranging idiosyncratic factors that influence individual employees within an occupational field. In the judicial/legal culture of the family courts community, making critical on-the-spot decisions and dealing with crisis situations were identified as the most potent stressors for judges who must provide timely, fair, and quality decisions in emotionally charged family litigations. Diversity related to professional and gender subgroups was reflected in the perceived severity and frequency of occurrence of the stressors and the responses to the individual stressor items by members of the family courts judicial community. These variations, together with findings from personality assessments and critical incident discussions, served as the foundation for calibration consultation intervention planning.